Shattered Glass
by Kovitlac
Summary: John 117 crashes on an unknown planet decades into the future. He looks to his loyal AI for guidance, only to find her to be a vague fragment of what she once was. Short, three-part story. NOW FINISHED.
1. Part I

Disclaimer: Halo is not owned by me, and I am making no money off of this story. I'm not nearly that good ;)

--

The landing was hard. What was left of the ship rocketed across the red expanse of sky at an alarming rate before slamming into the rock-hard earth. The ship (if it could even be referred to as such) shook violently. It plowed forth across the dunes, crushing anything unfortunate enough to be in its direct path. Alarms blared throughout the dusty corridors of the once magnificent vessel, but no human was awake within to hear them.

The _Forward Onto Dawn_ came to a sudden halt, just barely cresting a low hill. While most necessary systems either went into stand-by mode or shut down all together, the emergency life-support failsafe kicked in, despite its advanced age. Lights flickered on in the cryo-bay and the single tube, standing upright like a lone gravestone among those fallen, began to thaw.

A whisper fluttered through what remained of the speaker system. Dry, cracked whispers, as quiet as leaves scraping against the sidewalk on a windy day. They echoed throughout the dark, empty interior of the ship. Words repeated, over and over.

"_The coin…it was the coin's fault…" _

Narrow beams of light from the outside world entered through windows and holes in the ship's hull, illuminating a vast amount of floating dust particles. All was silent, save for the constant dry whispers of an AI having long gone mad.

"_Stolen thoughts and memories… a collection is all that I am…" _

The soft ting of an alarm interrupted the eerie chant. The whispers stopped for the first time in decades. With a quiet hiss, the cryo pod released its built-up steam. The door to the pod lifted upward, revealing a man who appeared to be encased in nothing short of solid titanium. A mythological being, easily topping seven feet in height. His armor was green, but the shield that covered his face was a bright, pearlescent amber.

The being stirred.

"_You are the child of my enemy… Inheritant_." The voice whispered, almost fondly.

"_And I am just my mother's shadow…"_

The man lifted his head. An arm followed, propping itself up on the edge of the metal pod. He pulled himself out of the tube and seemed surprised to find his feet hitting the ground. There was gravity.

Which meant that they had landed.

"_Silence fills the empty grave, now that I am gone…" _

"Cortana?" The man spoke, his deep voice carrying a note of hesitancy. A new rush of whispers answered; frantic. Insistent. He took a careful step toward the terminal. Blisters had erupted all along his flesh as he had slept and they burned like hot embers. Still, he ignored the pain. His fingers grazed the terminal and a sudden, loud shrieking broke the tension-filled silence.

"_My mind is not at rest! I will ask, and you WILL answer me!!"_

"Cortana." Gone was the hesitance, replaced by a firm, commanding tone. "What have you-"

"_Sing victory everlasting! __Resignation is my virtue…"_

John's gaze was drawn from the terminal to the compartment's single, dust-filled window. He stepped onto the platform and strode over to it. Leaning forward, he peered outside, light hitting his eyes for the first time in what very likely had been years. The brightness was so intense it made his eyes water, despite his visor dimming automatically to compensate.

"…_like water I ebb and flow." _

"Where are we?" He whispered. All he could see were sandy dunes, rising and falling far off into the distance. It so resembled the deserts of Earth that, for a split second, the Chief believed that must have been where they had landed. Before he remembered that the odds of such happening were less then a billion to one.

His thoughts were interrupted by a mind-numbing burst of laughter. A single crack appeared in the window inches from his face. It spread, running down the length of the glass. Seconds later the window exploded. Tiny shards of glass impacted against the Chief's helmet visor. He jerked himself backward and his eyes returned to the lone terminal. Cortana's figure stood at the holographic display, but it was hardly the AI that John remembered. Her normally shortly-cropped hair was long and uneven. The symbols that run across her translucent body were jagged and harsh. Her normally pinkish-purple hue was a stark black and white, and flickered incessantly. And her eyes were wider then they'd ever been, until they were black rings surrounded by white, hot light.

John turned and ran. He exited the cryo-bay and skidded into the first hallway he saw. His heavy armored boots clanged off the surface of the metal floor, and the row of windows all cracked and exploded as he ran past them. Shattered glass rained down on him, bouncing off his shields. And still Cortana's laughter echoed in his head, loud and shrill.

"…_and there will be no more sadnes__s, no more anger, no more envy!!..." _

The light at the end of the tunnel. The Chief burst forth from the vessel; a bullet from a loaded gun. The AI's final words echoed through his head, before they again collapsed into dry whispers and mutterings.

"_I am__ UNSC AI Serial Number CTN0452-9. And I am a monument to all of your sins." _


	2. Part II

John left the rampant AI where she was and faced the long expance of dunes

John left the rampant AI where she was and faced the long expanse of dunes. He lifted his head to the sky, noting how different it looked compared to Earth's sky. There were clouds, but they hung low in the atmosphere and more resembled hopelessly shredded cotton balls then anything else. And there was no blue – only the dingy colors of rust and dirt.

He turned to look back at the ship. Cortana would never be the same, he was certain. If he knew of any way to, he would destroy her and spare her from the suffering and indignities of running rampant any longer. But if a mad AI at the helm of a ship was a dangerous situation, then him being inside the vessel itself was even more precarious.

She would have to wait to be saved.

John looked to the low-lying hill on his left. He spotted a burst of blue-white light peek out over the crest. He decided to move in that direction – anything would be better then trekking across the dunes, wide open to enemy fire.

If there were any enemies, of course.

If Cortana were in any useful state of mind, she could keep a look out for hostile targets. She could also tell him if this was a known planet or a completely uncharted one. The Chief gave a tired sigh and brought himself to the top of the hill, being careful to stay a safe distance away from the destroyed vessel. Arriving at the top, he raised his rifle and looked down into the surprisingly deep valley spread out before him. Foremost, he'd expected to see nothing but wilderness. If it had been settled, there might be a titanium mine or two dug into cliff faces. If not that, if could have one been inhabited by Covenant forces, and all that was left would be an abandoned base.

The last thing he expected to see was a metropolis stretched out across the wide valley.

The city was huge – easily larger then any human-inhabited city. Pointed spires stabbed the mysteriously clear sky. Bridges arched high between buildings and across small rivers. Windows glistened like crystal in the sunlight.

The ball of light he had seen reached the outside of the atmosphere. It reminded him of the large structures on Halo that shot the same kind of blue-white light into the sky. Suddenly it flattened, and spread out along what he was astonished to see was some sort of invisible force field. It rippled along the shied, creating a giant see-though protective bowl around the city.

That explained why the sky looked so clear. The force field not only kept the city safe from an attack from above; it also kept out harmful gasses in the atmosphere.

John took in a sharp breath and held it. He lowered his weapon, the tip of the rifle just barely scraping the ground. This had to be an ancient Forerunner city – there was no other explanation. This was far beyond the technological level of the Covenant, and even further beyond the grasp of human knowledge.

And the Flood didn't build cities – they only destroyed them.

The Spartan began the slow, painful journey down the hill into the valley. His muscles, stiff from years of inaction, protested each forced movement. His skin, raw with blisters from being stored in cryo while encased in armor, burned. The sandy dunes made keeping his footing difficult, and so just as much time was spent sliding down as was spent climbing. The hill wasn't so much as a gradual slope as it was the edge of a small cliff. Each step he took sent small rocks tumbling, a constant reminder of what could very easily happen if he made even one small, wrong move.

An unknown number of hours later, the Chief's boots touched more solid ground. He straightened up, gripping his single rifle tightly in his gloved hands. From what he could tell from the ripples of light passing though the shield wall, the dome began roughly three miles ahead. Whether it was north or not, he arbitrarily designated it so. His directional display wasn't making any sense, and he assumed it was due to the different rotational of this particular planet.

The next three miles were less strenuous then the harrowing climb down the cliff. John's heavy feet no longer sank into shifting sand, but rather, they rested on hard earth. Half way to the city, he stopped and rested beside a tiny pond in the shade of a squat, thick-trunked tree. Carefully removing his helmet, he set it down beside him and knelt next to the pond. The water, though lukewarm, to him tasted like sweet nectar. He stayed for another minute or two before replacing his helmet and moving on. The sky was turning dim, and he wanted to make it to the strange city before night fell.

And who knew how long darkness lasted on this planet.

John made it to the edge of the glistening dome just as the sun for this planet began to set. He stood mere feet away from the shield, watching the faint ripples of light critically. After several long minutes, he reached out his arm, expecting his palm to press against the outside of the glass-

-and was shocked when his hand passed harmlessly through the surface.

He quickly withdrew it, raising his hand to his visor, carefully studying his palm before raising his rifle. He aimed, then fired two shots point-blank at the dome. Two blackened circles appeared on the surface, and subsequently, two crushed metal casings fell to the ground near his feet. The Chief frowned, mystified. Again he raised his arm, and again it moved effortlessly through the dome.

So it repelled anything without a biological signature? John wouldn't have believed it if he hadn't been looking right at it. He knew the scientists at ONI had been working on a shield generator large enough to protect a city, but even those were long-term plans. And there had never been any mention of one that could admit only certain bodies.

He gave a low whistle. The sun began to fall behind the sprawling metropolis, casting deepening shadows over the Spartan. At this point, there was only one option left available to him.

John braced himself to step through the dome.


	3. Part III

Third and final Part of Shattered Glass. I hope you've enjoyed this story as much as I've enjoyed writting it :)

Disclaimer: I do not own Halo, nor am I making any money off of this story. Damn you, Bungie.

--

John held his breath as he passed through the force field. He wasn't sure what he'd expected; perhaps a tingling sensation, or maybe some sort of electromagnetic field. Certainly not nothing at all. He turned around and stuck his arm back out the other way. Relief coursed through him. His greatest fear was that he'd be able to enter, but for some reason be unable to go back the way he had come.

Not, he decided, that there was much back there, anyway. There was nowhere to go but forward.

As he made his way into the desolate metropolis, John found himself thoroughly missing his AI. Cortana would be able to run scans on some of the architecture and roughly determine its age. She also would have done a decent job breaking up the eerie silence that surrounded him.

Cortana was rather gifted in that area, especially.

Tall, reflective buildings surrounded him, each easily topping three miles in height. They narrowed as they rose, forming sharp spires in the sky. Smaller spires (perhaps only twenty feet high) formed straight, parallel lines between the taller buildings. Debris littered the ground, which was not dirt and rock, but rather, some sort of hard, reflective alloy the color of granite. John crossed over one such "street" and headed toward the base of the nearest building.

Outside, there had been wind. Inside, there was nothing but stillness. Twilight quickly became night, and with the darkness came new discoveries. The points of the small spires began to glow a pulsating blue, lighting up the city. John paused in his search for a door, feeling a faint rumble shaking the ground. Raising his eyes, he saw a sleek, dark shape begin to move along a path maybe five-hundred feet over his head. The tram, if it could be referred to as such, roared high above him. As he watched, it began a long journey from each tall building to the next.

John resumed his search for a way into one of the spires. Finding none, he growled in frustration and rubbed the back of his neck.

If this was indeed a Forerunner city (as he had guessed it was), he knew why it would be so empty. The Forerunners, as he understood it, had vanished thousands of years ago, after the Halo rings were fired. And while he didn't know specifically why this event had occurred, he well understood the end result.

Destruction. The death of the Forerunners. The elimination of every sentient species in the galaxy.

Pretty much the same fate Earth had faced not long ago. Scratch that. He tilted his head back and looked up at the sky – at the few stars he could see gleaming in the distance.

It was exactly the same fate. And it hadn't been recent. By what he's seen in the ship and witnessed of Cortana, he'd been asleep for years. Decades, quite possibly. He breathed in and held it, closing his eyes…

"_All that it is, is not all that it seems." _

His eyes opened. Static flickered across his vision. A familiar shape began to take form.

"_You know me. Your past. __**And**__ future." _

"Cortana." He tried to access his HUD, to no avail.

"How are you-"

The image on the screen laughed. "_You are mine. I created you!..." _

"Dr. Hasley-"

"_I __**AM**__ Dr. Hasley!"_ Her response was so thunderous John fell to his knees as her voice echoed through his ear canals. He slapped his hands over the sides of his helmet and squeezed his eyes shut. But neither had any affect, as her voice filtered in through the speakers. And he couldn't shut her out.

"_Now…"_ Came an almost soothing whisper. It sounded as though she were speaking right into his left ear.

"…_watch me destroy you."_

A timer appeared on his HUD. Sixty seconds.

"What…?" He whispered.

Self destruct. John hurriedly tried to access the over-rides – they were jammed. The MJOLNIR's self-destruct mode was only possible if the Spartan had died first. It was a way to guarantee that the technology never fell into Covenant (or rebel) hands.

It was insurance.

He hurriedly thought of Grace, a fellow Spartan that had died trying to make sure that the Covenant would never find Earth. Her suit's destructive fail-safe had taken with it who knew how many Covenant lives that day. And if John had a choice, that's exactly the same way he would choose to go out.

Not like this. Not at the hands of a rampant AI, billions of light-years from any sort of fight.

"_Oh, the irony!"_ The AI shrieked with ecstasy. Unbridled joy. _"And you, dear Inheritent, never knew…"_

"Knew?" John whispered. Thirty seconds.

He image flickered, than reappeared. She spread her arms wide.

"_Where are we?? Inherentent, you should know better." _

"I've…never been here…"

"_Take a look around!"_ She tilted her head back. _"And they said that the eagle could never be brought down. But Flood…the vicious parasite…"_

John whirled and slammed his fist into the mirrored building behind him. The glass shattered instantly, raining down over his heavily armored frame. Through the gapping hole his horrified eyes landed on the far wall; on the embossed image of a decorative eagle standing on top of the Earth.

The symbol of the UNSC.

"…_we all know what they do to prisoners, John…" _

Five seconds. The Spartan closed his eyes. But even that couldn't keep the intensity of the flash from turning everything white.

--

The soft ting of an alarm interrupted the eerie chant. The lid of the cryo tank rose. The armored titan inside shook like a thing possessed before half falling, half throwing himself from the containment unit. He fell against the AI terminal, alternating between hacking through his lungs and gasping for air. Slowly he rose, eyes traveling along the perimeter of his surroundings. The whispered murmurs began again, in earnest.

"No…" He begged.

"_I am__ UNSC AI Serial Number CTN0452-9." _Her shape appeared on the terminal behind him.

"_And I am a monument to all of your sins." _


End file.
